


Poetry Night

by DwarvenBeardSpores



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Episode: e020 Poetry Week, Graphic Descriptions of the Moon, M/M, Other, Poetry, Typical Night Vale Weirdness, Unrequited Crush, mentions of carlos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 00:59:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13670964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DwarvenBeardSpores/pseuds/DwarvenBeardSpores
Summary: It is Poetry Week and composing is mandatory. Cecil stays up late to write, with only the moon and the Sheriff's Secret Police for company.(This is a prose piece, but features the occasional poem or bit of poem.)





	Poetry Night

**Author's Note:**

> I got my dad listening to Night Vale, and he loves it. His favorite episode so far is Poetry Week, so this is a short companion to that episode, which I wrote for his birthday. It is posted here with his permission.

The night was dark, and Cecil was awake.

It was Poetry Week and composing was mandatory, even for the man who had the privilege of reading poems on the radio. Not that Cecil was complaining; he _loved_ Poetry Week. The outpouring of words, of images, of half-veiled truths and gorgeous lies from the mouths of his fellow citizens. The box of normally-illegal pens and pencils that had been delivered to his door early Monday morning, and would inevitably vanish by the end of the week. The growing sense of community that comes through shared artistic vision and coercion.

It was one of Cecil's favorite times of the year. 

Soon, there would be a stack of papers by Cecil's right elbow, poems written in an unpracticed hand. Now, he started slowly. It was one thing to speak gently to listeners on the radio, after all, quite another to put words on paper that looked the way they sounded.

This poem, for instance, his first of the night, was a bit awkward. 

 _My hand does not remember how to use a pen, only a stick dabbed with food paste._  
_The two are more different than they appear._  
_It cannot feel wrong,_  
_it does not feel wrong,_  
_it is perfectly legal._  
_But the me that is here now has never held a pen,_  
_can barely imagine it._  
_The me that held a pen last year has not been seen for some time_  
_and no one reported him missing._  
_When I pause mid-line and lick the tip of my implement  
_ _It does not taste like raspberry jam._

That was as far as he'd gotten before the Sheriff's Secret Police Officer loitering outside his bedroom window had interrupted him by knocking.

"Hey," said the officer, when Cecil went to the window. "Look. If it's not too much trouble, would you mind reading aloud while you write? I'm trying to decipher meaning from the sound of your pen on paper, and that's actually really hard from out here."

"Oh," said Cecil. "Yes, of course. How inconsiderate of me." 

"It's fine," said the Officer, who was named Ginger. She was holding a notepad in one hand and a pencil in the other. The cover of the notebook said POEMS THAT I DEFINITELY WROTE MYSELF.

"I'll let you read it now," Cecil offered, and went back to his desk to grab the paper. He was rather proud of it. Ginger scanned it quickly and, under her leather balaclava, seemed to frown.

"Is this all?" she asked.

"So far," Cecil said. "I've only been at this for fifteen minutes."

"Damn," said Ginger. "I knew I should have fought harder to be assigned to Old Woman Josie. Officer Todd was all like, 'it'll be fine, he's got all that poetry in his program all the time, his writing's gonna be great,' and I was like, 'but Josie has You-Know-Whats helping her,' and Todd was like, 'no, I don't know what, have fun with Cecil.' And then you write me this. Ugh."

Cecil lit up. "Do the Sheriff's Secret Police really like my program?"

"Just... get back to writing."

Cecil did. He wrote and he wrote, line after line. He spoke out loud as he wrote, which was a little awkward when he had to cross something out and go back, but it actually helped his thoughts flow more naturally. 

One poem was about the moon, _that slowly blinking eye upon whose blank iris someone has written the secrets of the night in a shaky, but strengthening, scrawl. That milky lens, unattached to any camera, too far away to listen in on what the people down here are saying. There are countless spy networks for that, but the moon watches even them._

Ginger interrupted that one too. "Look," she said. "I know we've lifted the ban on descriptions of the moon, but don't abuse that, okay?"

"Oh, of course not," said Cecil. "I was just trying to express my feelings. You know, about the moon." He could see the moon quite well out his bedroom window (where it was _the stretched skin of a drum, silently beating out the rhythms of the night_ ) because he'd moved his desk closer to make it easier for the Secret Police to monitor him. Ginger gave very helpful feedback. 

"Well, it's kind of uncomfortable; I don't want to think about the moon watching me! So stop it."

Cecil moved on to other topics. He wrote: 

 _You look at your hand and it is not your hand_  
_you wonder where your real hand went, unaware_  
_that it is behind you  
_ _and it has your wallet._

He wrote about Khoshekh, floating five feet in the air next to the sink in the men's bathroom, _a living monument of adorableness that sometimes sprays acid._

He wrote about fear.

He wrote about the radio:  
  
_That word, rrrraaaadiooo._  
_One word to describe sound waves like veins, crisscrossing a small community._  
_Three syllables to describe the words that flow like blood in endlessly twisting, invisible paths, feeding and being fed by each person in turn._  
_Five letters to describe the mechanical and the organic fused in perfect, municipally approved harmony._  
_Rrrrraaaadioooo._

He wrote about the scent of vanilla, _a gentle smell that reminds you only of what you have forgotten_. He wrote about dreams he'd never had. He wrote about senses that didn't align, and images poorly joined at the seams. 

He almost wrote about Station Management, but Ginger pointed out that was objectively a dangerous idea, so he let it drop.

And, for the first time in recent memory, Cecil wrote love poems. Several of them. One that followed the thirteen-line, sixty-seven syllable form of standard courtship verse. One that was exclusively dedicated to as many adjectives for Carlos's hair as Cecil could think of. Another that used lab coats as a symbol of devotion, and one that was just _Carlos,_ written many times, in many different handwritings. "It's that modern, experimental style," he explained.

"Mmmhmm," said Ginger, her nose buried in her own notebook. "Do you have a rhyme for viscera?"

"So, look." Cecil leaned out the window. "Someone's reading Carlos's poetry right now, right?" 

"Yep. I think that's Julian." 

"Do you think you could, um, ask what kind of poetry Carlos is writing? I mean, I don't want to be too forward and ask him _myself_ , but, well, it's _Carlos_. I can't help but wonder."

"I'll see what I can do," Ginger said, and whispered into her radio watch, which looked exactly like a normal watch but with a tall antenna on it.

"Thanks," Cecil said, and pulled out a new sheet of paper on which to extol the virtues of Carlos's jaw.

He had gotten to _"as well-defined as the dictionary entry for a phrase you've known since childhood"_ when Ginger interrupted.

"You wanna know what Julian said?"

" _Yes."_

"Well, apparently Carlos has been writing poetry in between running experiments on the bushes outside his lab."

"Uh huh."

"But he's been very prolific."

Cecil sighed happily.

"He's written fifty-seven odes to science."

Cecil grinned. Carlos was _so_ dedicated. So perfect. It was really attractive. "And?" he said, after a few seconds or maybe minutes.

"And that's all. Julian says he's working on his fifty-eighth now."

"Oh." Cecil's smile, and his heart, dropped just a bit.

"Sorry Cecil."

"No, no. I'm fine." He shook himself out of the momentary melancholy with the skill of someone who is very practiced at denying emotions, as well as sights, sounds, and ideas. "It would have been _really_ romantic if we were both writing love poetry at the same time. But, well. Who am I to dictate what he writes? Who am I to deprive science of dozens of carefully crafted odes?"

Ginger chuckled. "That's the spirit."

"He, uh, he's not going to get in trouble for sticking to one theme, right? I know sometimes the City Council has been really particular about that…"

"Julian thinks he'll be fine."

"Oh. Good."

"Hey, you still never gave me a rhyme for viscera."

The night passed slowly into dawn, with only a brief interruption by glowing lights in the darkness. Cecil wrote, thinking that it was pretty romantic anyway that he and Carlos were composing poetry at the same time. And, it wasn’t just them. Cecil and Carlos were joined by Ginger and Julian. Old Woman Josie and her angelic friends, and the Glow Cloud, and John Peters (you know, the farmer?). Everyone in Night Vale was clutching pens in their hands, or tentacles, or non-corporeal body parts, and engaging in a wild night of government-mandated creation. Tomorrow there would be thousands of poems in the world that had never existed before, and the day after there would be still others. Hearts would be metaphorically poured onto pages, lungs would be figuratively emptied across keyboards. Words would create the firmament of their reality, at least for this one week.

It was night. It was dark. A librarian howled.

In the darkness, Cecil wrote.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> I'd love to know what you thought, and what poems it has inspired or coerced you to create. 
> 
> I can also be found on tumblr as dwarven-beard-spores.


End file.
